INTELLIGENCE AND MORALS 57 



and now. The divine comedy of modern medicine 

 and hygiene is one of the human epics yet to be 

 written ; but when composed it may prove no un 

 worthy companion of the medieval epic of other 

 worldly beatific visions. The great ideas of the 

 eighteenth century, that expansive epoch of moral 

 perception which ranks in illumination and fervor 

 along with classic Greek thought, the great ideas 

 of the indefinitely continuous progress of humanity 

 and of the power and significance of freed intelli 

 gence, were borne by a single mother experi&amp;gt; 

 mental inquiry. 



The growth of industry and commerce is at once 

 cause and effect of the growth in science. Democ- 

 ritus and other ancients conceived the mechanical 

 theory of the universe. The notion was not only 

 blank and repellent, because it ignored the rich 

 social material which Plato and Aristotle had or 

 ganized into their rival idealistic views ; but it was 

 scientifically sterile, a piece of dialectics. Con 

 tempt for machines as the accouterments of de- 

 spised mechanics kept the mechanical conception 

 aloof from these specific and controllable experi 

 ences which alone could fructify it. This concep 

 tion, then, like the idealistic, was translated into a 

 speculative cosmology and thrown like a vast net 

 around the universe at large, as if to keep it from 

 coming to pieces. It is from respect for the lever, 

 the pulley, and the screw that modern experimental 



